Duke says the Ohio fuel spill lasted for 15 minutes and the fueling operation was stopped at 11:30 p.m. to prevent further discharge.

“We notified state and local authorities of the incident and have been working with them throughout the overnight hours,” Chuck Whitlock, Duke Energy president of Midwest Commercial Generation, said in a prepared release. “We have cleanup crews on site that are identifying the appropriate actions that will be needed to remediate.”

Beckjord Station is in Clermont County, about 20 miles east of Cincinnati. It is largely coal-fired, but it has four turbines that burn No. 2 fuel oil. The spill occurred during refueling for those units.

The capacity of those four units is 244 megawatts. The six coal units total 1,124 megawatts.

The Enquirer says the Coast Guard has closed the Ohio River from the point of the spill, at mile marker 453, to mile marker 468.

Fleet sale

The Coast Guard told the Enquirer the closing was done to prevent vessels from being contaminated as they move up or down the river. It is expected to take several days to clean the spill, which the Coast Guard described as medium-sized.

But the Beckjord units are not part of that sale. Duke plans to retire all six coal-fired units at the site by Jan. 1, before the sale of the fleet. And the oil units, which do not have a publicly acknowledged retirement date, are not listed among the 11 plants up for sale.